"True! Nature never repeats herself in dogs. In so doing, Nature works directly for my benefit, as I will show you. Now, in the second place, as you are probably aware, there is an ordinance forbidding unmuzzled dogs to run in the streets during the hot months--" "An excellent law," interrupted Overtop. "If caught at large without muzzles, they are taken to the public pound, and, unless redeemed by the owners within twenty-four hours, are drowned in a tub--" "Serve 'em right," remarked the hydrophobiac bachelor. "Now, I am _slightly_ acquainted with some members of the Common Council" (he laid emphasis on the word "slightly," to imply that he was on terms of the closest intimacy with them), "and can easily obtain from them the privilege of catching all the stray dogs, and taking them out of the country next summer." "Which would be very benevolent to the dogs; and, regarded from their point of view, your idea is a noble one," thoughtfully observed Marcus Wilkeson. "But I don't, at this moment, exactly see how you are benefited by it." Mr. Tiffles smiled with the consciousness of power, and chidingly said: "You are dull this morning, Mark--quite dull. Strike, but hear! In a word, then, I propose to exhibit two or three hundred of these dogs, in some country where there are _no_ dogs. I would give them strange names, put them in cages, and call them the 'American Menagerie of Trained Animals.' A person who had never seen dogs, would suppose each one to be a different species from the others--just as the lion, the tiger, and the leopard are different, though all belonging to the one cat family. Now, there is my idea. What do you think of it? Of course, you laugh, at first." Roars of laughter from the three bachelors had formed the chorus of "Wesley Tiffles's closing sentences. Marcus Wilkeson, as became his age, was the first to recover himself. "The idea is a splendid one. None better. But there is one slight difficulty in the way. Where are you to find your country that has no dogs? If there were such a happy land on the face of this earth, Overtop would have hunted it up long ago, and moved there." Overtop laughingly replied, "That's so." He then informed Mr. Tiffles, while admitting the theoretical excellence of his idea, that every nation had its dogs as well as its fleas. Those two friends of man were impartially distributed over the terrestrial globe. Overtop referred to the standard Cyclopaedias, and several works on Natural History, in proof of his assertion. "Can't be! can't be!" retorted Wesley Tiffles, who was at first disposed to defend his brilliant idea. But brilliant ideas were a common growth of his fertile mind, and, like all things easily produced, he held them cheaply. The moment that evidence, or the test of practice, showed them to be fallacious, he gave them up, and drew upon his brain for others. So, after a second's reflection, he added: